'Beyond Limits' - Chatsworth - Derbyshire

http://www.aboutnottinghamshire.co.uk/
Every year Chatsworth, the gorgeous Stately Home in Derbyshire, holds an outdoor sculpture exhibition, in conjuction with Sotheby's.

It was clearly going to be different this year, displaying the work of a single artist - Barry Flanagan.  He was born in 1941, and died of motor neurone disease in 2009.  Chatsworth already owns several of his hares, so I felt familiar with his work.

The first thing that struck me was that there were far fewer sculptures than in the past, with nothing in the cascade, such a delight before, nothing outside the shop nor on the lawn. (See what I mean from the exhibition in 2009 and 2010)
In fact the first sculpture I found was at the back of the Rose Garden, and the elephant did seem a bit of a lump!
Here is another, this time high in the rockery area, and titled Six Foot Leaping Hare on Silver Pyramid.  One of the more interesting pieces was entitled Sculler and was set in the Ring Pool, which certainly gave it interesting reflections

 I did like this rather striking image called 'Composition', but that was partly because of it's striking setting. As expected, there was a sculpture at the end of the Canal Pond and was huge.  Entitled 'Large Nijinski on Anvil Point' it glinted in the autumn sunshine.



Generally I was rather disappointed with this exhibition, which was very unusual for me and anything going on at Chatsworth!  I do appreciate that organising and mounting these annual outdoor sculpture exhibitions must involve a vast amount of work and money, but I do hope next year Chatsworth will be able to revert to the previous format of both classical and modern pieces.

The Beyond Limits exhibition continues until the 28th October 2012****If you would like to know more about me just click here